Stone jailed for Stormont attack

Loyalist killer Michael Stone has been jailed for 16 years for trying to kill senior Sinn Fein leaders in a one-man raid on the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The 53-year-old was sentenced at Belfast Crown Court for the attempted murder of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness during a bizarre armed attack on Stormont.

The former Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, who gained notoriety in 1988 when he killed three mourners at an IRA funeral in west Belfast, claimed his actions at Parliament Buildings in November 2006 were an act of performance art.

However, the judge in his non-jury trial last month dismissed this theory as wholly undeserving of belief.

As well as two attempted murder counts, the father of nine was found guilty of seven other charges related to the Stormont attack, including possession of nail bombs, three knives, a garrotte, an axe, and causing criminal damage to the Stormont building.

Handing down his sentence, Mr Justice Deeney said he had decided not to give Stone a life term on the grounds that his actions had not resulted in any serious injury and the fact that he suffers from a degenerative muscle wasting condition which, he acknowledged, would see him confined to a wheelchair in the future.

However, the judge said he also had to take into account the serious offences that Stone had already committed before his attack on Stormont.

"He could hardly have a worse criminal record," the judge said, "and I do take into account the very grave offences of which he was convicted in 1989."

Stone, who in 1989 was convicted of six murders, including the three men he killed at Milltown Cemetery, was released on licence in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

He now faces the revocation of his licence on an outstanding 30-year tariff.